Fear, class and quiescence: Activist views on the ‘sinister’ narrative during the Irish anti water charges campaign (2014–2016)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the deployment of political fear by the Irish government and supporters during the Irish Anti Water Charges Campaign (2014–2016), with a focus on the use of the framing of working-class activists as ‘sinister’. Drawing on the works of John Gaventa and Fiona Jefferies, this article challenges the notion of political fear as a reflection of a wider, cultural malaise that is passively absorbed by targeted communities. Instead, this article contends that political fear was strategically aimed at creating the conditions for quiescence by framing the public discourse around the protest as a violent and dangerous spectacle. A second key argument offered challenges an increasingly common discourse that seeks to link working class activism with violent, hateful populism by demonstrating how deviance framing of protestors ensured that they were to be viewed as both the subject and object of fear, in the latter case, through threats of criminalisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Politics of fear
• power
• quiescence
• working class

Introduction

This article explores the targeted use of political fear towards activists by the Irish government and its supporters during the anti-water charges campaign (2014–2016). The campaign itself emerged as a result of government attempts to impose domestic water charges on the general public, a policy that was widely perceived as both an austerity measure and as a prelude to water privatisation. As a consequence, protests, activism and opposition to the proposal generated one of the largest and most successful mobilisations in the history of the Irish state. Part of the government response to this was the deployment of political fear in various manifestations, but the core fear narrative centred upon attempts to portray working class activists, who were at the forefront of the campaign, as inherently ‘sinister’. According to activists, the objective was clear – to divide the larger movement along class lines and to draw the public gaze away from substantive issues that the campaign had sought to highlight. While the overall campaign was successful in opposing water charges, these fear narratives had a real impact, not least on propagating the threat of criminalisation upon working class activists.

The manifestation of fear as a political narrative has long history, evident, for instance, in the politics of ancient Greece or canonical political writings of the European Enlightenment, while presently, it seems to enjoy something of a ubiquitous presence in contemporary liberal democracies (Kapust, 2008; Robin, 2004). Its influence is indelible in multiple elections and referenda, the recent Covid pandemic (Johnson et al., 2020) as well as seemingly endless social media exchanges. The politics of fear, has, if anything, become more culturally visible and its presence is ominous. As Jefferies puts it:

Terror networks, roiling economic meltdowns, communications infrastructure failures, ecological catastrophes, swirling pandemics and crime waves – these are the most prominent harbingers of fear flowing and converging with undulating intensity through the globalised media-space over the last decade (2013, p. 39).

The politics of fear offers a potentially rich area for sociological analysis. It is a phenomenon that offers specific focus to the interplay between structure and agency, the personal and the political, as well as the intersectionality of emotions, politics and power. It is a signature of subjugation and conflict as well as acting as an ideological/ hegemonic device serving to draw a veil over the nature of conflict (Robin, 2004, pp. 2–3).

Yet, despite the centrality of fear in both political and social organisation, the sociological study of emotions is relatively recent (Tudor, 2003), where an established tendency has veered toward the cultural rather than the political and in doing so, negates, for instance, the targeted subjugation of particular social groups and communities. This article seeks to challenge such a conceptual turn, what Jefferies refers to as a ‘culturalization of politics’ (2013), by arguing that political fear results from a deliberate and strategic exercise in power that is contingent, relational and is at its most effective when it threatens the very expectations of everyday or ‘normal’ living (Debrix & Barder, 2009). Additionally, Jefferies (2013) contends that the disposition towards the cultural approach to analysing fear, omits consideration of how fear narratives are experienced in varying contexts. This is congruent with the research presented here, where fear narratives are class-based and where specific communities became the focus of political fear. However, this article also seeks to redress what Mondon and Winter (2019) refer to as a ‘mainstream elite’ narrative that seeks to frame white working-class politics and activism around varying notions of populism, extremism and anger (Joosse & Zelinsky, 2022; Rudolph, 2021; Schäfer, 2017). This discussion offers a different perspective on two specific counts. Firstly, this article highlights how the threat of the sinister narrative was constructed, via a ‘deviance framing’ or ‘protest paradigm’ approach, and with recourse to historical and contemporary narratives, actively promoted the notion of working-class political activity as inherently dangerous, extreme and violent. Secondly, this research also demonstrates how working-class activism can become, simultaneously, both the subject and object of political fear. Here, concreted efforts to frame working class activism through the ‘sinister’ lens contributes to the fear of criminalisation as a measure to encourage non-participation in the campaign.

Fear typically induces multiple responses – fight, flight, fright or freeze (Bracha et al., 2004) and it is the latter that carries a particular resonance in this current discussion as the key argument offered here is that attempts at framing certain protestors as ‘sinister’ sought to promote a state of quiescence within the anti water charges campaign. Quiescence, as John Gaventa observes (1982), cannot be equated with consent, nor does it signify an absence of conflict (or ‘grievance’). Instead, quiescence is ensured through creating conditions of powerlessness and non-participation in political processes, resulting in certain issues and narratives being consigned to the status of ‘non-decisions’. As will be seen, the sinister narrative constituted an attempt at agenda-setting (protestors framed as extremists, violent, etc), where a significant ‘mobilisation of bias’, involving just the government but also significant sections of the news media, the Gardaí (Irish police) and others – played key roles.

Key aspects of John Gaventa’s conceptualisation of power relationships offer analytical spaces for examining political fear, not least in his seminal work Power, Powerlessness, Quiescence and Rebellion (1982). Gaventa’s research sought to examine the nature of power relationships between a number of Appalachian communities and the land and coal companies that have exploited them. What is particularly relevant to this current discussion is a core focus on how ‘power works to develop and maintain the quiescence of the powerless’ (Gaventa, 1982, p. vii), and crucially, how power is interpreted by those who find themselves on its receiving end. This point is crucial and this article adapts aspects of Fiona Jefferies (2013) framework for examining how fear, as an exercise in power, is interpreted or mediated in varying contexts. This is both a salient but largely absent feature of much research that explores fear as a cultural phenomenon – ‘The world is given a strangely seamless appearance, as if it were populated be only two kinds of social actors: those whose critical capacities are paralysed by fear and by those who are busy promoting it’ (Jefferies, 2013, p. 38).

The article begins by seeking to differentiate political fear from broader literature that considers social fear as a product of deeply ingrained, cultural angst, where agency, intent and motivation are largely absent. Instead, it will be argued that the social construction of threats or risks is imbued with political imperatives. Moreover, political fear is strategic, calibrated and signifies, more often than not, deliberate attempts at exercising coercive power and subjugation. Here, a mobilisation of bias becomes a key hegemonic moment, where sympathetic sections of the news media deploy a ‘protest paradigm’ (Lee, 2014), and where other supporters, groups or organisations become willing cheerleaders. A critical feature of the sinister narrative used against working class anti water charges campaigners is its appeal to historical discourses associated with the ‘dangerous classes’ and a fear of political extremism, as well as finding resonance with other contemporary views of working class communities where they are framed as chaotic, vulgar and irrational.

Next, the article offers an exploration of the use of political fear during the anti-water charges campaign, with a focus on views of activists themselves. Crucially, the activists initially saw the deployment of fear as, in one sense, the price of the success of the campaign in that it was perceived as a significant threat by the government. The sinister narrative itself was viewed as a rather crude attempt at splitting the campaign between middle class supporters, the voting base of the government parties – here framed as reasonable and ‘genuine’ protestors, and working-class activists, deemed extreme, dangerous and violent. Yet, the deployment of fear ultimately failed in encouraging non-participation or significantly dividing the movement and this can be attributed to a perceived lack of credibility and relatability of the fear narratives in question. However, the failure of political fear in this instance should not negate the very real impact the sinister narrative had on working class campaigners and communities, particularly with respect to the threat of criminalisation and the nature of the policing of local protests.

This article draws on findings from twelve interviews, conducted from September 2020 and March 2021. The research itself was conducted during Covid lockdown conditions, and as a result, the fieldwork was conducted via social platforms, by phone or by email. The duration of the social platform interviews varied from 40 min to 2 h, while the phone interview duration of one hour. In relation to the email interactions, follow-up email exchanges were used in order to clarify certain points or to ask for elaboration on specific issues. In total, five interviews were conducted via social platforms, six interviews were conducted by email, while one was conducted by phone. Initially, 28 individuals were approached to participate in the research, while 12 eventually took park in the fieldwork. At the outset, the decision was made to would primarily reflect the views of local activists, which accounted for six interviews, but also reflect the structure of the wider movement, with interviews conducted with national organisers (two participants), members of political parties three interviews and social movements (one interview). Participants were asked to reflect on their own interpretations and experiences of dealing with fear narratives in the course of the campaign. They were specifically asked about the ‘sinister’ narrative and how it affected their local campaign and activism, the impact of the threat of criminalisation and what lessons may be learned for future activism. Findings were coded and analysed thematically from a critical/ social constructionist approach that sought to emphasise the nature and importance of individual interpretations but just as crucially, sought to elucidate the nature of power operating within the fear narratives that were deployed during the campaign.

Conceptualising the power of political fear

According to Svendsen (2008) fear occupies a dominant position in the development of human societies to the point where -

Fear is one of the most important power factors that exists, and the person that can control its direction in a society has gained considerable power over that society (2008, p. 125).

Despite this, the recognition of the importance of emotions in sociology and political science has been relatively recent (Heaney, 2011; Tudor, 2003), where, for instance, Westen argues that emotions and emotional responses are central to political discourse (Westen, 2007). In the case of sociology, a core focus of contributions has largely concentrated upon a general cultural and societal fear or anxiety. Here, threats can emerge as an unintended by-product of modernity (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990), or from the cultural transference of values and beliefs that reflect a societal obsession with mistrust and ‘apocalyptic thinking’ (Furedi, 1997). For some authors, risk is indicative of anxiety towards future uncertainty, located largely beyond the control or reach of agents or institutions. It is positioned within a society where ‘ … the laws of faceless power apply everywhere’ (Beck, 1997, p. 28), emanating primarily from an ‘economic-techno’ sphere of activity and resides very much outside of the grasp of politicians (Yates & Beck, 2003). Instead, as Flinders asserts, general, societal risk and anxiety give rise to a ‘politics of crisis’ (Flinders, 2012, p. 123). Here, ‘new risks’ are fluid and prone to ‘scaremongering’, particularly by interest groups, placing politicians in the unenviable position of having to address an ever-expanding agenda of issues driven by unrealistic public expectations (Flinders, 2012, p. 123). Similarly, Bauman identifies ‘liquid fear’ as an inescapable feature of ‘liquid modernity’ where a general societal fear arises as a consequence of uncertainty and where ‘progress … now stands for the threat of a relentless and inescapable change’ (Bauman, 2007, p. 10).

Elsewhere, influential works by Cohen (1972) and Hall et al. (1978), underline the relationship between cultural signifiers and ‘moral panics’, while Frank Furedi offers the argument that a general culture of fear initiates political non-action and results in ‘ … an incoherent doctrine that can be termed the conservatism of fear’ (2005, p. 10). As a consequence, ‘ … safety and the attitude of caution are now treated as inherently positive values across the entire political spectrum’ (Furedi, 1997, p. 9) and where ‘ … politics has internalised the culture of fear’ (Furedi, 2005, p. 131). Meanwhile, Glassner offers a detailed analysis of how fear permeates and determines news production and dissemination in the USA (2009), which is indicative of ‘the growing socioeconomic importance and global cultural diffusion of commercial media technologies, forms and aesthetics’, ensuring a ‘cultural over-production of surplus fear’ (Jefferies, 2013, pp. 39–40). Yet, Jefferies also warns us that the cultural fear perspective – that fear emerges and exists outside of agency, ‘ … implies a reductive sense of enveloping fear, one that turns the emotion into a generic experience that people absorb passively’ (2013, p. 44). Equally, Tudor argues that cultural of fear perspective ‘ … is a form of theoretical short-hand that runs the risk of reifying society (“society’s disposition to panic”) and so concealing the agents activity essential to transmute cultural resources into real patterns of social life’ (2003, p. 246).

A second key point is that, in certain contexts, it is possible to discern the fingerprints of political power in the construction of narratives derived from the cultural and societal fear approaches. For instance, the political expediency, if not strategic nature, of cultural fear is underlined in Hall et al. (1978), where the authors demonstrate that the guise of a moral panic over mugging served as a convenient subtext for the deliberate targeting of young black working-class men by the police. Likewise, within the realm of the risk society, the idea that politicians are merely honest, but ineffective brokers in the face of endless, universal risk simply obscures the role of power in the framing of such threats (Lupton & Tulloch, 2002; Raco, 2002), where risk discourses demonstrate an inherent ‘production of social inequality via deliberate government strategy or neglect’ (Lupton & Tulloch, 2002, p. 331).

It is within this context that political fear can be thought of as a coherent political strategy rather than as merely a ‘cultural product’ (Autto et al., 2022, p. 87). As an exercise in power, the politics of fear is relational, contingent and therefore, simultaneously coercive and productive. It can be deployed as a public good – a position promoted by Johnson et al. (2020) who offer the view that the perception of political fear as a negative, irrational, overly emotional response to threat indicates a ‘tendency towards fundamentalism’ (2020, p. 20). They go on to offer what they term as a ‘defence of fear’ in that fear is fundamental to the pursuit of societal interests. This view finds resonance in Giddens’ claim that – ‘sometimes scaring people might be necessary in order to persuade them either to alter their behaviour, or to accept the steps that should be taken to avoid a particular danger’ (1998, p. 62). Yet, the ‘public good’ argument should not be overplayed as political fear is maintained as a potent political instrument, and for good reason. Fear elicits the regulation of behaviour; it shapes beliefs and values; it subjugates and hides inequalities while distracting us from the nature of power and social order (Kapust, 2008). In short, fear works. Indeed, as Robin points out, fear has become something of a political necessity for liberal democracies, where politicians ‘ … often embrace it [politics of fear], in spite of themselves, as a source of political vitality’ (2004, p. 4). This is despite an intuitive sense that fear runs counter to democracy (Jefferies, 2013).

What would appear crucial in the operation of fear at a micro level is the notion of a perceived threat of ‘ … not being able to live according to normal or expected conditions’ (Debrix & Barder, 2009, p. 409), which in turn, assumes that the perceived threat is both authentic and relatable enough to carry a resonance for the targeted population. As will be seen, in the context of the Irish anti water charges campaign, threats to ‘normal or expected conditions’ found effect in various ways – threats to water contamination, to adequate water supply, to the safety of participating in a protest and ultimately, to democracy itself. The propagation of the fear threat relies heavily upon a ‘mobilisation of bias’ (Gaventa, 1982; Lukes, 1974) or what Debrix and Barder refer to as the ‘ … (re)productive mobilisation of fear’ (2009, p. 409). This involves a coterie of ideological supporters and collaborators, including, in the case presented here, government parties, supporters outside of government, sympathetic sections of the news media and key elements of the Gardaí and underlining Robin’s contention that political fear is ‘ … an affair of collusion … ’ (2004, p. 163). A mobilisation of bias becomes a perquisite to framing narratives deemed suitable for public discourse and ensures that:

Certain powerful people and institutions maintain their influence by controlling who gets to the decision-making table and what gets on the agenda. These dynamics operate on many levels to exclude and devalue the concerns and representation of other less powerful groups … (Gaventa, 2006, p. 29).

This process, if successful, results in agenda-setting as a framing device for wider public perception, where the proliferation of fear can serve as a distraction or ‘misdirection’ and where people, in the words of Glassner, are encouraged ‘to fear the wrong things’ (2009, p. xxv–xxvi). This is evident in the deployment of ‘deviance framing’ (Gitlin, 1980), where sections of the news media routinely rely upon perceived threats and fear narratives in its framing of protests, campaigns and activists. Whilst news media coverage is obviously important for movements, Gitlin’s research (1980) on the symbiotic/ problematic relationship between the news media and protest movements shows that news media frames can have a corrosive effect upon movements, particularly when they are effectively cleaved into groups of moderates and militants (Gitlin, 1980, p. 229) or, as is the case with reporting the anti-water changes campaign, between the reasonable and the sinister. Invariably, media attention focuses upon protest activity as a ‘spectacle’ rather than issues or causes, as was the case with the Iraq anti-war movement (Murray et al., 2016, p. 9). Moreover, the ‘protest paradigm’ adopted in the news media tends to focus upon

… the violent and disruptive aspects of the protest actions, describes protests using the script of crime news, highlights the protestors’ (strange) appearance and/or ignorance, portrays protests as ineffective, focuses on the theatrical aspects of the protest and neglects the substantive issues … (Lee, 2014, p. 2727).

Not all reporting of activism or protests are subjected to the protest paradigm and more contemporary literature on this phenomenon has identified multiple factors that affect news coverage of campaigns, particularly in a hybrid media environment (Boyle et al., 2012), where the protest paradigm itself can be considered a variable rather than an a priori construct (Lee, 2014). Despite this, there remains discernible preponderance towards the deviance framing of groups or campaigns that perceived to be anti-status quo or radical in the tactics that they deploy (Boyle et al., 2012; Gil-Lopez, 2021; Harlow et al., 2017; Lee, 2014).

The particular nature of the deviance frames that are featured in this research reveals a reliance on historically based tropes that directly reference class-based threats towards others’ expectations of normal living. The term ‘sinister’ itself conjures images of an intrinsically violent, debased and irrational mob – to be feared and reviled in equal measure – and links historically with the so-called ‘dangerous classes’ – heterogeneous social groupings that defies categorisation, definition and therefore, control (Scheu, 2011). According to Mulholland, the dangerous classes have historically included working class movements, specifically those ‘ … harbouring political inclinations, other than a wish to be saved by patrons, visionaries or demagogues’ (2012, p. 60). Chaos, fear of contamination and rampant criminality goes alongside a fear of working-class politics that has been portrayed as ‘authoritarian predispositions and ethnic prejudice’ of the ‘lower classes’ (Lipset, 1959). In turn, this extremism finds articulation in more contemporary narratives of working-class populism, populated by who D’Eramo refers to as ‘ … the unmentionable people’ (2013, p. 20), that resort to ‘ … hate, fear, anger and “unease”’ (Holmes & Manning, 2013, p. 479). Terms such as ‘popular’ or ‘populist’ are indicative of a dangerous politics that is characterised as ‘ … anti-liberal, uninterested in nuanced solutions to complex problems, and always has the potential to be xenophobic … ’ (Morris, 2012). Moreover, a conflation of working class politics and right-wing populism is observable in the profile of pro-Brexiteers as typically low-paid, semi-skilled/manual workers that self identify as working class, never attained higher educational qualifications and voiced a preference for authoritarianism (Demos, 2017). Likewise, angry, working class populism is also viewed as contributing to the rise of Trumpism (Rudolph, 2021; Schäfer, 2017), which in one case, is exemplified as a ‘berserk-charisma’, resulting from a ‘a self-abandoning, bloodthirsty rage’ (Joosse & Zelinsky, 2022, p. 1084) The portrayal of working-class politics as chaotic and unreasonable is itself intertwined with a wider cultural revulsion of ‘chavs’ (Hayward & Yar, 2006; Jones, 2012), which, according to Tyler, represents contemporary ‘class disgust’ and represents ‘ … a new episode in the dirty ontology of class struggle … ’ (Tyler, 2008, p. 18)

As with other hegemonic devices, political fear maintains a centaur-like duality where coercion underlines the conditions necessary for achieving consent or in this case, quiescence, as a result of non-participation and inaction. The distinction between quiescence and consent is important in this context. Gaventa argues that quiescence, rather from being an indication of political consent, instead can be a signifier of a ‘generalised discontent’ that reveals itself as ‘rebellion’, given specific circumstances (Gaventa, 2021, p. 252). Non-participation can occur either through the imposition of formal/ informal barriers or results from an anticipation of defeat and becomes a core component of quiescence (Gaventa, 1982). Creating the conditions for non-participation partly relies upon, or as Gaventa puts it, the ‘manipulation of symbols’, which included in his research in Appalachian communities, the use of labels such as ‘communist’ or ‘troublemaker’ (Gaventa, 1982, p. 14). The objective here, according to Haugaard (2021), is ‘ … to socially construct the other as unreasonable, thus unworthy of engagement’ (p. 161). A key feature of this research concerns how the sinister narrative served to construct working class campaigners as both the subject and object of fear. Here, fear was deployed to discourage support and participation from the middle class (Power et al., 2016), the fundamental support base of the government political parties. At the same time, the sinister narrative served to create conditions of non-participation within working class communities primarily through the threat of the criminalisation of activists.

Encountering the sinister narrative – the views of anti-water charges activists

In order to properly consider the Irish anti water charges campaign, it must be placed within the broader context of the 2008 economic crash and the implosion of the Irish banking system, resulting in a series of austerity budgets and amounted to a level of public debt that was unprecedented in European history (Finn, 2015, p. 51). As part of a bailout programme, the Irish government agreed to the introduction of domestic water charges from 2013. Almost from the outset, fear was deployed to ensure compliance with the charges. The government were keen to draw on the threat of water scarcity (Clinch & Pender, 2019), where, without adequate investment, the existing system was in real danger of breaking down with the possibility of wide-scale contamination of supply (McNicholas, 2015, p. 4). One research participant observed that this threat ‘ … tapped into the genuine fears of some about the potential for water shortages in the future if there was not investment into the infrastructure’. More alarmingly, the then environment minister Phil Hogan, who would later become a European Commissioner, issued the explicit warning that those who refused to pay the charge would have their water pressure reduced to a ‘trickle’ (O’Carroll, 2014). One research participant was scathing in relation to the ‘trickle’ threat, likening the government approach to ‘ … intellectual snobbery … like they’re talking down to a lower form of humanity’.

Opposition to the new charging regime became a clarion call, not just against the water charges themselves, but also against wider government austerity policies. Issues around a simple inability to pay, privatisation, tax injustice, along with perceived cronyism and corruption, all acted to energise protestors (Hearne, 2015, pp. 9–11). Active opposition to water charges and the installation of water metres emerged from April 2014, beginning with local action in Cork and then Dublin (Cox, 2017). The local nature of this activism was crucial for the overall success of the campaign, which was largely concentrated on working class housing estates where metre installers were blockaded from entering certain areas and in other instances, activists physically prevented metre installation. These largely autonomous local groups would then mobilise for national days of action under the Right to Water moniker (Finn, 2015). The movement, both nationally and locally, comprised of what Brendan Ogle, a national organiser and trade unionist referred to as ‘three pillars’ – the communities, political parties and trade unions (Ogle, 2016). Rather than viewed through the prism of one-off issue protests or party politics, Cox argues that the anti water charges campaign constituted far wider working class, anti austerity movement, characterised by ‘popular participation’ and ‘self education’ (2017, pp. 161–162).

Ultimately, the success of both local and national protests translated into significant levels of non-payment. and, tellingly, a series of mass protest marches between 2014 and 2015. The national days of action and marches brought tens of thousands of protestors onto the streets, most notably on the 11th of October, while a series of nation-wide protests on the 1st of November 2014 being ‘ … possibly the largest demonstration in the history of the Irish state’ (Power et al., 2016, p. 5). Ironically, these days of mass protest proved to be something of a watershed for the campaign with respect to political fear. Once that it became clear that the movement had massive support, particularly in relation to middle class supporters, the media narrative changed – one organiser commented –

… there was a six week period there when they start asking questions and they learn that its resourced … it was very professional … it only became sinister when it became a threat … 

On the 5th of November 2014, activists sought to prevent the then Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Enda Kenny from exiting the opening of a sport club in a north Dublin suburb, resulting in a number of arrests. A subsequent protest against the arrests resulted in scuffles between protestors and police (Finn, 2014). The then Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar, was quick to suggest that the water protest movement now consisted of ‘people protesting legitimately and reasonably’ and a ‘very sinister fringe’ – ‘They abuse the gardaí, they break the law, they engage in violence … ’ (Irish Independent, 2014). This view was echoed in a statement by the ‘rank and file’ police association, the ‘Garda Representative Association’ that complained of ‘ … a “darker element” at work within the grassroots protest movement … ’ (Brophy, 2014). On the 15th of November, events escalated further when the Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Joan Burton, was prevented from leaving a prize giving ceremony at a local community education institute by a large crowd of anti-water charges protestors in the Dublin suburb of Jobstown. In one newspaper article, it was claimed that those Gardaí involved in Jobstown had their home addresses circulated by ‘ … “sinister” fringe elements … ’, while death threats were received by the Environment Minister, Alan Kelly (Cusack, 2014). This article goes on to identify key protest groups involved, ranging from dissident Republican groups to ‘criminals’ who now used the protests as a means of attacking the Gardaí. Elsewhere, the protest was compared to the killing of two British soldiers in Northern Ireland, protestors themselves were compared to ISIS (O’Halloran, 2014), while the Taoiseach commented that the incident was ‘almost a kidnapping’ (Silke et al., 2020, p. 3333).

The ‘sinister element’ narrative was experienced in a number for ways by protestors. For some respondents in this research, it was a narrative targeted directly upon working class communities and activists – ‘ … we were vilified … and the fear that was plastered across media then for months’. Another respondent made this observation:

I feel there was a deliberate narrative being spun about working class communities, inferring that they live off the state, they were called parasites in the Dail [Irish national parliament] by a TD [elected member of parliament], how outrageous is that!! I feel it was directed so much at those specific communities to shame them into being quiet, by using their poverty against them to silence them … 

Part of this particular framing was that protests were violent and unsafe with one research respondent interpreting it thus – ‘you go on one of these protests, your child could get hurt … these things are very dangerous to be on … ’.

Some commentators further suggested that the campaign signified a ‘left populist’ movement (Hourigan, 2017) that was very much at odds with ‘ … formal (elite) democracy’ (Cox, 2017, p. 185) and as such, constituted an existential threat to order and stability. For instance, one government minister insisted that the anti-water charges movement amounted to ‘ … selling utopian, populist rhetoric … ’ (Clarke & Bardon, 2016). Rather more forthright, a former Minister upped the ante still further with a new fear narrative – the threat to democracy itself:

… the financial collapse has given us a new brand – new to Ireland – of nihilist left politics that is about permanent protest and is destructive of progressive politics. Fooling people that they can get services without having to pay for them will only help undermine the fabric of true democracy (Rabbitte, 2017).

According to activists interviewed, the populist or ‘mob’ narrative served a clear purpose:

… it wanted to highlight the working class communities involved here, and portray them as a sinister fringe to stop the likes of the upper middle class areas who are engaging at that point in time and say, you know what? You’re engaging with a sinister fringe here and that’s not okay.

This approach, according to one respondent, was actually counter-productive – ‘ … the notion of “the mob” was certainly widely used … it served to underline the class difference between the “rulers”, politically and economically … and the “ruled” – the “mob” – the rest of us’.

A central fear threat that activists faced centred on potential criminalisation. This became most evident in a series of house raids and arrests, where 27 protestors were charged in relation to the events at Jobstown, including the rather serious charge of ‘false imprisonment’. One protestor commented on the political nature of the charges facing the arrested activists:

… the state saw their chance to crush us and the following morning, after that, the entire establishment commentary was talking about false imprisonments … Which was unheard of in a situation like that, sit down protests and blocking cars has been a tactic of protest for decades.

Added to this, one activist spoke of other implications for criminalisation, where she voiced her fear of being arrested at her workplace and as a result, losing her job:

… there was a fear in the sense of like … you’re a teacher in the community and you’re up there and you’re putting your head above the parapet and you’re getting involved in protests … and there is that sense of your job being on the line.

It should be noted that the subsequent trials related to Jobstown collapsed largely due to contradictory nature of the evidence against the accused where the judge even went as far as to instruct the jury to effectively discard testimony of the Gardaí when it clearly conflicted with video evidence (Gallagher, 2017). Despite this, many respondents in this research pointed to the nature of policing on the protests – viewing aspects of it as an attempt to provoke responses from protestors, leading to criminalisation and therefore, to justify the ‘sinister’ labelling of the movement. A campaigner commented – ‘ … if we don’t cause trouble, we will be facilitated, or they will facilitate … facilitate creating trouble in my opinion’. The threat of criminalisation became a key consideration of whether or not to participate in the campaign for some. One activist recounted how identifiable community leaders were particularly targeted by the Gardai – ‘ … this is how they get you. Because if, if you’re one of those main activists who are leading the charge against the water charges, you know … you go, “fuck it. I’m gonna have to back down”’. Meanwhile, one respondent drew a contrast between policing of working-class protests and at more ‘middle-class’ protests in relation to the Marriage Equality and 8th Amendment campaigns:

So, there’s that level of police presence at all these protests. And they were working class protests. Do you see that level of police presence at any other type of protest? You know, but this was, this was being led by working class communities. And like, I didn’t see that at Repeal … I didn’t see it at Equality

Accompanying the ‘sinister’ narrative was repeated mention of ‘reasonable people’ by sections of the news media, where ‘[t]he “reasonable people” are assumed to be in the majority separate from the minority “sinister element” or “fringe” who are understood to have ulterior political motives’ (Power et al., 2016, p. 270). According to this specific discourse, ‘genuine’ protestors did indeed have justification for marching in the street against the nature of the imposition of charges. Describing ‘ … the peaceful and noble march of more than 1000,000 people on the streets of Dublin’, one journalist contrasted this with the protestors in Jobstown – ‘ … the aggressive, violent and sickening actions of a small rabble who seek disorder and chaos, no matter what the cost’ (McConnell, 2014). One research participant did feel that the narrative had a negative impact in this regard:

… Up until then we saw a marked involvement in the campaign and demonstrations of people from different backgrounds, all ages and different classes. In fact there was media coverage of that at the time but after Jobstown there was a change in that dynamic … .

However, other research participants thought that it did not have any meaningful effect, with one respondent linking the relative failure of the sinister narrative to issues around authenticity:

I feel the sinister fringe story backfired for them, trying to portray a movement of ordinary everyday people, mothers with pushchairs, kids, older people, as some fringe group of dissidents. The government and media were smearing their own citizens.

Another added:

These threats though kinda made the movement stronger because these were ordinary people being threatened when they were refusing to pay what they saw as an unfair double charge on something. Working class people don’t like to be scammed!! Paying for something twice and being threatened while doing so doesn’t go down well.

Ultimately, as Hearne et al. point out, ‘ … [w]hilst an effort was made to conflate civil disobedience with public disorder, and to criminalise some assemblies, the movement overall was recognised to be too volatile and powerful for the political mainstream to control or ignore’ (2015, p. 237). As such, the success of the campaign initially translated into electoral politics, where the general election of 2016 saw 90 out of 158 representatives to the Daíl elected on an anti-water charges platform. Water charges were suspended and then abolished – with the controversial exception of charging for ‘excessive usage’ from April 2017.

Discussion – the limits to quiescence and fear

When domestic water charges were originally introduced, it would be a reasonable inference to make that the government anticipated a public reaction of resignation, rather than one of resistance. This expectation, in part, arose from a narrative that the Irish people ‘could take it’ when it came to austerity measures (Cox, 2017; Finn, 2015; Hearne, 2015). Power and Nussbaum (2014) offer an insight into this elite mindset through their research with policymakers, members of financial institutions, media personalities, journalists and academics. Here, inaction was attributed to a curious cultural mix of Catholic guilt and self-flagellation:

Although stories are told of institutional ‘villains’ – the banks, the financial regulator, and the government – the Irish public is represented as losing the run of themselves during the boom years; and now must suffer austerity to gain redemption.

This belief was also underlined, infamously, by the then minister for finance, Brian Lenihan who declared ‘ … In France you would have riots if you tried to do this … ’ (Lucey, 2009). If this was the anticipated reaction, it echoes Gaventa’s contention that quiescence is an often misinterpreted reaction to ‘the use or mis-use of modern-day power’ (1982, p. 4) that is formed out of discontent rather than consent. However, while passivity or non-participation was not achieved through government strategies in relation to water charges, fear narratives still had a discernible impact on working class campaigners. In the first instance, these findings clearly emphasize that political fear is an exercise in power that seeks to vilify and marginalise, rather than merely managing public expectations (Flinders, 2012) or a political response to a ubiquitous, cultural fear (Bauman, 2007; Furedi, 2005). It gives credence to the argument posited by Hall et al. (1978), Raco (2002) and Lupton and Tulloch (2002) that fear threats are actively created by governments in the name of political advantage and crucially, are neither unusual nor uncommon when it comes to liberal democracies (Robin, 2004). Bringing politics and power into consideration avoids a tendency within the literature to reify fear (Jefferies, 2013; Tudor, 2003) as a consequence of cultural reproduction, or to view political fear itself as an inevitable ‘cultural product’ (Autto et al., 2022). Secondly, this research serves to underline Jefferies key contention (2013) that political fear is not a passive experience. It is clear from the findings that while the government’s objectives were not met, fear still had it had a real and personalised effect. The politics of fear created real anxiety and worry, not least in the threat of arrest along with implications of a criminal record in terms of work and careers.

To highlight that political fear is an exercise in power, this article adopted key aspects of John Gaventa’s conceptualisation of power and powerlessness in order to illustrate the nature of power relations that underline the deployment of political fear. With respect to the water charges campaign, quiescence was actively sought, where fear narratives played a key role in creating the conditions for this response. It is within this context that the sinister narrative constitutes a rather blatant and arguably, clumsy attempt at agenda-setting. The government’s efforts at resetting the public discourse on the protest relied heavily upon well-worn framing devices in relation to working class communities. Likewise, the protest paradigm, as iterated by Lee (2014) was evident in coverage by certain sections of the news media, where there were concerted attempts at creating a binary between working (sinister) and middle class (genuine) campaigners (Power et al., 2016). A mobilisation of bias was further enhanced through not so subtle interventions by the Gardaí with respect to charactering working class activism as part of the ‘sinister element’ that had contaminated the laudable aspirations of so-called ‘genuine’ protestors.

The positionality of working-class protestors as both the subject and object of fear is a key feature of this study and was evident in both the generation of the sinister discourse and the threat of criminalisation that followed, allowing for a degree of elucidation of how governments can engage in the active marginalisation of social groups through the use of fear. Further, it also offers something of a counter position to the narrative that contemporary working class politics are inextricably a source of threat and fear when this very narrative is in fact deployed as a justification for overtly coercive measures (what some respondents referred to as ‘political policing’) against these very same communities. The social and political construction of communities that are perpetually tethered to angry extremism and hatefulness in this case, involved a wide ‘manipulation of symbols’ (Gaventa, 1982) – at various times, allusions were made between working class, anti water charges activism and militant republicanism, criminality, nihilism, 1980s Marxist Leninism and even ISIS. Meanwhile, the rationale for the sinister narrative itself was heavily classed, with research respondents all too aware of the intent of the government strategy of the ‘moderate/militant’ cleavage (Gitlin, 1980) where working-class activists faced the prospect of ‘ … being plastered across the media for months … ’, while their middle-class associates were being feted as ‘noble’ in certain news media. Crucially, according to research participants, this had very real consequences on how non-participation was sought through fear narratives, where a far more coercive approach was deployed by the state in working class communities, primarily through the threat of criminalisation. This, in turn, echoes the argument made by Brock et al. (2022) that stigmatisation is ‘ … linked to the power to define what is acceptable and unacceptable, legitimate and illegitimate, and which stigmatised behaviours become criminalised’ (2022, p. 5).

It is a contention of this article that while the sinister narrative is certainly congruent with more historical constructs of working-class narratives, the ‘dangerous classes’ are given a more contemporary sheen in the invocation of the ‘populist’ moniker – a term, as McShane observes is ‘ … a lazy shorthand for any politics we do not like’ (Dempsey, 2015). This, in turn, carries more than an echo to popular contemporary discourses in relation to the ‘social abjection’ of working class communities (Tyler, 2013), where ‘disgust’ and revulsion are deemed accepted points of expression and gives credence to Tyler’s argument (2008) that class antagonism remains very much alive.

Earlier in this article, it was suggested that political fear is most effective at a micro level when expectations of normal living are targeted (Debrix & Barder, 2009). Despite a significant mobilisation of bias on the part of the government and its supporters, the sinister narrative simply did not meet conditions that would enable quiescence to be achieved. This, it can be argued, is due at least in part to the fact that the government’s fear threats were simply not relatable enough to the conditions of normal or everyday living that many members of the Irish general public found themselves in 2014–2016. This research shows that fear narratives around contamination and cutting water pressure were viewed by protestors as a series of strategic gambits by an increasingly desperate government. At the same time, Hearne’s research on the reasons why people engaged in the non-payment campaign was because of other, very real fears to their expectations of everyday living, namely, the prospect of ongoing austerity and financial hardship (Hearne, 2015, p. 8), of which, water charges and the prospect of water privatisation, would have contributed to further financial deprivation. In other words, as Jefferies proposes, fear threats are ‘differentially experienced’ and that people actively ‘appropriate messages’ and ‘create alternative meanings’ to such narratives (2013). The sinister narrative and the idea that local campaigns had been taken over by extremist political operatives or terrorists simply did not chime with members of working class communities that were targeted by such a mobilisation of bias … where, in the words of one research participant, ‘People could clearly see that these were ordinary everyday people, just like themselves’. In this context, ongoing austerity was far more disruptive to expectations of normal living than threats emanating from a politically constructed ‘sinister fringe’.

Conclusion

This article has sought to elucidate how political fear was experienced and interpreted by activists during the Irish anti water charges campaign between 2014 and 2016. While a variety of fear narratives and threats were deployed, this discussion focuses primarily on the ‘sinister’ narrative, where there was a concerted attempt by the government and its allies to define the public discourse through deviance framing, with the objective of dividing the anti water charges moment along class lines and as a consequence, create the conditions for non-participation. Here, working class communities were vilified as extreme and dangerous and its implications were especially profound for the activists in question. In conceptualising political fear as a strategic exercise in power, this article offers a cogent response to literature that seeks to conceptualise political fear as somehow inevitable, unintentional and ‘unidirectional’ (Jefferies, 2013) in its impact. Instead, the deployment of political fear in this instance involved a deliberate mobilisation of bias, while its effect interpreted in a myriad of ways. Secondly, this article questions a preponderance within certain literature that seeks to conflate working class activism with populism, extremism and hatred. These discourses carry both a historical resonance and an ongoing relevance where cultural tropes invigorate middle class revulsion and fears in relation to the’ dangerous classes’. Instead, this article has sought to show an instance where such narratives were constructed for reasons of political expediency, resulting in a scenario where working-class activists became both the subject and object of fear.

At a fundamental level, fear threats need to be believed and must carry a degree of relatability or validity with their target audience in order to effective. This simply did not occur in this instance principally because fear narratives were mediated through the hardship and fatigue of ongoing austerity. To be sure, it can be argued that establishing the ‘truth’ of fear claims in a ‘post-truth’ world, that relies heavily on the promotion of a protest paradigm via a print or ‘legacy’ news media, has, to a large extent, lost its resonance in an increasing changing information environment. For instance, Kleres and Wettergren make the argument that, in the current environment of ‘post politics’ political fear may have reached something of a tipping point in terms of its effectiveness due in part to ‘the almost normalised diffusion of fear messages (food scares, terrorism, etc)’ where ‘inducing fear in the public may be an already voided strategy’ (Kleres & Wettergren, 2017, p. 512). Likewise, Silke et al. argue that ‘ … a politicised and partisan journalism appears to have lost much of its credibility’ (2020, p. 3331), especially in a time of ‘ … waning media power’ where both legacy media and social media are effectively in competition with each other (Silke et al., 2020).

And yet, in this new media environment, where competing claims of what is real or true become a dominating feature of the environment, the politics of fear has found a new and welcoming home and if anything, has become more focused and vibrant. This is evident, for instance, in relation to the COVID pandemic, the deepening climate crisis, immigration, or issues around integrity of multiple elections. At the same time, liberal democracies continue to trade in routine fear narratives thereby contributing to the normalcy of fear politics. The simple reason for this is fear continues to be effective as a political tool. It continues to work in emphasising threat (both as productive and coercive power), division and subjugation – it remains too irresistible, too profitable, and too useful to ignore. Fear remains a central functioning characteristic of liberal democracies, political activism and commercial marketing where the reward is counted in ‘ … votes, ratings, donations, and profits’ (Glassner, 2009, p.xii). The cost, however, whether in terms of the deliberate vilification of social groups or in the corrosion of a general trust in democratic processes, would still appear acceptable in return for the promise of political power.

Acknowledgements

This research was approved by Maynooth University Ethics Committee, Ethics Review ID: 2417809.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).